"Practicing an art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow... Sing in the shower, dance to the radio, tell stories, write a poem to a friend, even a lousy poem. Do it as well as you possibly can. You will have an enormous reward.You will have created something."—KURT VONNEGUT--

How To Make Everything, TV show​"How To Make Everything aims to explore everyday things many of us take for granted. Andy George, host of the show, attempts to craft items entirely by hand, but first he must gather the raw ingredients as they would be found in nature. How To Make Everything isn’t so much of a “how-to” show as it is a way of understanding the world. In each episode, Andy takes on a new product, learning the history and evolution of the things we use every day."

"I am a lead pencil—the ordinary wooden pencil familiar to all boys and girls and adults who can read and write.

​Writing is both my vocation and my avocation; that's all I do.

You may wonder why I should write a genealogy. Well, to begin with, my story is interesting. And, next, I am a mystery—more so than a tree or a sunset or even a flash of lightning. But, sadly, I am taken for granted by those who use me, as if I were a mere incident and without background. This supercilious attitude relegates me to the level of the commonplace. This is a species of the grievous error in which mankind cannot too long persist without peril. For, the wise G. K. Chesterton observed, “We are perishing for want of wonder, not for want of wonders.”

I, Pencil, simple though I appear to be, merit your wonder and awe, a claim I shall attempt to prove. In fact, if you can understand me—no, that's too much to ask of anyone—if you can become aware of the miraculousness which I symbolize, you can help save the freedom mankind is so unhappily losing. I have a profound lesson to teach. And I can teach this lesson better than can an automobile or an airplane or a mechanical dishwasher because—well, because I am seemingly so simple..." (more, and more)